That Pesky FRESH (vote) Section

I Admit It: I Have A Love/Hate Relationship With The FRESH Section

The original purpose of the FRESH/VOTE section was to give the community the ability to weed out reposts and downright shitty/not funny posts. But over 96% of posts are making it through the voting process and showing up on the FRONT PAGE. Maybe the bar is too low. Maybe our posts are that good (Haha! Okay, that’s not true). And, maybe people have become accustomed to seeing reposts and know they are not the end of the world.

Here’s My Beef

I think the biggest problem with the FRESH/VOTE section is that it only serves to delay whatever timeliness there is to some posts. Posts can languish in the FRESH/VOTE section for up to 12 hours. Less than 1% of visitors to this site ever visit the section. I really don’t think the FRESH/VOTE section accomplishes much these days.

Here’s Our Plan

So, we’d like use the month of February to test how things go without the FRESH/VOTE section. If, after the month ends and we’re convinced we can do without it… then we’ll kiss it goodbye. If it becomes clear that there is a noticeable benefit to keeping the FRESH/VOTE section, we’ll reinstate it. We’d love to hear your input in the Disqus comments below.

How Will User Posting Work Without A FRESH Section?

We have several ‘trusted’ users who have shown a history of posting solidly funny snaps. When they post, it hits the site immediately without moderation. We’ll continue to upgrade users who show this same posting capability. It generally takes 5-10 successful posts to earn this status. Curated posts and user posts requiring moderation will hit the site every 20 minutes as in the past. By the way, getting rid of the FRESH section ensures that the FRONT PAGE will see new content at least every 20 minutes.

StupidSnaps.com

If we (or you) post a StupidSnap, it should be downvoted to hell. In fact, I kind of miss the days when the community could come together and to pummel a post someone on the LolSnaps staff thought was funny, but clearly was not.

So, here’s what else we’re working on:

Daily LolDumps. We’ve begun to upload daily meme collections (LolDumps) for those who want a little more funny in their day. As soon as we have a couple of weeks behind us, we’ll make it so the LolDumps can be navigated more easily. Why not integrate these into the normal LolSnaps feed? Because dumps are a different animal: they don’t have titles and contain reposts (more than usual), and they generally contain 20-40 memes in one post.

Photoshop Contests. We’re going to tiptoe back into the Photoshop contest arena. We’ll award Fake Internet Points to the winner. Thanks to everyone who gave us the nudge to do that. The Photoshop contests will have their own section and will be promoted site wide.

Additional Sections. We’ve got more plans for new sections in the future, but would love to hear from you about your ideas for new sections. Keep in mind, it needs to include humor (it is LOLsnaps, after all).

Site Speed. As has always been the case, advertising is our worst enemy and best friend. Enemy because it is BY FAR the biggest challenge to site speed and friend, because it keeps the lights on. We’d like to shave the page load time by 25%, but some restructuring and behind-the-scenes work is needed to accomplish that goal. For those of you who continue to support us by viewing ads, thanks. If you’ve turned off ads because it really hinders the experience, we completely understand.

Your input is really helpful.

Experiencing bugs or problems with the site? Got questions or have ideas for new features we should explore? Please leave your comments below. As always, a big thanks to everyone!

Published on: Jan 15, 2018

Tim

I visit the Fresh page pretty rarely, often only because I’m having a particularly boring day and am desperate for new material. I hope your suspicion that we could do without it is confirmed.
Also, sorry this is a tad off topic, but there have been more and more posts lately that are missing the comments section, particularly in the last 24 hours or so.
Thanks!

HoodieDog

Just fine-tuned a setting on the comments. Give it an hour or so to populate and respond back to this comment if the problem continues.

Has it happened in the past day or so? We implemented a fix that seems to have solved the problem.

almightybeard

Let me browse a little while tonight. Been busy at work. I’ll get back to you.

Tim

I’m on my laptop 99% of the time, so that’s the only place I’ve noticed it. using Chrome.

seth clammy

laptop, firefox, frequency depends:
if i scroll to comments as soon as the page loads, the comments are missing in like 1 out of 20 tries,
if i click previous and open some other tab, it’s closer to 1 in 5

When I’m all caught up on recent snaps, as in I’m not traveling, I visit VOTE a number of times a day. (That number is very high).
I don’t mind that the section is there, but I do think it’s unnecessary – for me at least. I see all the snaps anyway.

Another point pro-removing the section; if the snap doesn’t make it into NEW, whatever conversation was made while still in VOTE is also lost, which is sad for those engaging on something. Even if others hate it, or maybe in spite of those who hate it, or just to engage in how we all hate it.

Vava

I do like downvoting something to hell but we’ve had very few of those posts lately. Bring on the shitposting!! I visit the vote section all the time. I like casting an unbiased vote.

http://meilidraw.com Stickers the Bum

holy shit Photoshop battles?! FUCK i haven’t used Photoshop since the last one!

Johnny Alpha

yeah, but you did do some goodies!

http://meilidraw.com Stickers the Bum

lol true, but i always did come in second when that one person who was kick ass at photoshop dropped in ;( not that i was mad, maybe just jelly

Johnny Alpha

I’m in nappies in relation to you – I will try though ;D

http://meilidraw.com Stickers the Bum

i wish you best of luck friend! may the spirit of hoodie guide you into fame

Johnny Alpha

… ask the dirty daughters, maybe …..

Name_Unknown

The issue I’ve always had with the Vote/Fresh section is that it messes up my browsing habits. Typically, whenever I visit, I will just hit previous until I find the snap I last viewed. If I’ve been visiting the Vote section I will see a post that I’ve *seen* before, but doesn’t mark the correct spot. So, I either stop there (and miss posts) or keep scrolling (and see many posts I’ve already seen). It’s not a big deal, but it’s why I rarely visited. Personally, I think we’ll do fine without it.

FizzPop

Yes! Good point. I’ve also experienced mild frustration at that.
Currently, though, I’ve not minded as much because with a LOLsnaps profile, votes are remembered, and with scroll view, it makes it very quick to find the snaps I haven’t seen yet.
But yeah – that’s a lot of unnecessary steps.

Another thing I’ve noticed recently, @HoodieDog:disqus, for the most part for the last 2 or so months, I’ve been accessing the site on my phone.
LOLsnaps only seems to remember my votes while I’m connected to the internet via wifi, and not when I’m connected via mobile data. I’m logged in to my profile and browsing with wifi and all is fine, then the wifi disconnects and I’m switched to mobile data, I stay logged in to my profile, but suddenly all my votes are forgotten (I don’t think they’re removed, they’re just no longer linked to my profile). Then as soon as I switch back to wifi again the green arrows are restored.

HoodieDog

When you say you are ‘logged into my profile’ are you logged into Disqus AND your LolSnaps.com profile… or just Disqus? If your logged into LolSnaps and vote on wifi and then switch to mobile (while logged into LolSnaps), the votes should follow you. If that’s not the case, we’re not going to worry about it as there are endless configuration issues we’d have to track down.

FizzPop

Sure, no problem, I understand. Just something I noticed.
It’s while I’m logged in to both.

FizzPop

Not complaining, per se, and I know it’s not a priority, but just wanted to let you know – my votes aren’t being remembered at all, anymore.
Still logged in to both lolsnaps and disqus. Happening on both WiFi and mobile data.

HoodieDog

So, if you vote… you can vote again and again? Or is it that you can vote on your computer and then vote again on your mobile phone? One last one: or is it that you can vote and the site doesn’t even register your vote? Just trying to gain some clarity.

FizzPop

Ok. I vote on my phone – while logged in to both disqus and LOLsnaps, using WiFi at home.
I change to mobile data, open LOLsnaps, the vote number is the same but it’s not green(/red) and I can vote again.
Then I change back to WiFi, open LOLsnaps and the same thing again. The vote number stays the same but one is no longer “mine”, and I can vote again.
Then, while logged in to both on my personal laptop and my work laptop – the same thing.
I vote on a snap, close the page/browser, come back at a later stage and can vote again.

Edit: not quite that I mind, just that I’d gotten used to my votes being remembered, and I was using it as a way to find snaps I hadn’t seen yet, and that was nice 🙂

HoodieDog

Some kind of bug, for sure. We haven’t been able to replicate it. Got a major update at the end of the month and we’ll cross our fingers that it corrects the problem.

Johnny Alpha

btw Hoodie you say that FIP points ‘should follow’ us …. could I point out that Pax has stolen all our FAP points ….

Kelvin

I’ve never been a big fan of the Fresh/Vote section, although I visit it every few hours to do my duty and send good snaps to the front page. Most of the times bad snaps had the best comment sections, and I miss those days. A few bad snaps a day don’t change the quality of the content on the front page that much. I’d like to see how things play out.
I’ll have to reinstall Photoshop for the battle. My contribution won’t be great, but I’d love to see all the submissions. I like the way things are heading!

Patchy

You could also use a neat little (read “affordable alternative”) app called Polarr or go hipster-mode and use MS Paint.

James Denman

“Additional Sections”
I think i remember when lolsnaps had a section specifically for webcomics. This seems like the same sort of thin…….

HoodieDog

We had a completely different site, webcomics.com. It died a slow and painful death. Now we just integrate them into this site, but it’s done pretty haphazardly.

James Denman

It looks alive to me, just seems a different sort of beast, with podcasts and stuff instead of just a stream of webcomics. Unless someone bought the url, I guess.

Actually, it was so long ago I forgot that we didn’t have webcomics.com… but dailywebcomics.com. Hurr durr…

James Denman

Ah there we go, theres the dead site XD

Patchy

“In fact, I kind of miss the days when the community could come together and to pummel a post someone on the LolSnaps staff thought was funny, but clearly was not.”

Someone’s feelings hurt in 3…2…1…

Patchy

Someone needs to make a Lolsnapxxx.com section and put whatshisname in there permenantly. BTW, how is he doing? I am ashamed to say I don’t spend as much time on the site as I used to back in the olden days, but I know he was let back in. I assume that means he’s calmed the fuck down a tad.

Andre Poreskin

You mean Jose? Or some other debaucherous freak I can’t wait to meet?

Johnny Alpha

that would get pretty depraved in about…oh…5 mins 0_o

Das Puggy

He’s doing well, and he’s not online very much. He really is an all-or-nothing guy, though. Yes, he has calmed down some, but definitely the same old Jose we know and love (hate).

Coffeeinator3000

FYI fake internet points are more real than atlas passes.

Johnny Alpha

they’re not as good as ‘Dirty Daughter Passes for Good Daddy’ – those have real value and I have to really earn them :/

Andre Poreskin

Curious about the ads…Do you still get revenue from them if they’re blocked? Can they track that shit? Too lazy to google it…

HoodieDog

No revenue if they’re blocked. We do know how many daily visitors use Adblock and it’s a fukton.

Rohan Hampson

It has just occurred to me that I do this. I’m going to work out how to whitelist you (is that correct) so that the ads display on this website.

FizzPop

I am sad to hear that :/

Tanya Wicht

Some of us just forget to turn it off. (I just clicked on the “dont run on this page” option on ad blacker – fingers crossed that works.)

Ingemārs Volters

Me too.

Das Puggy

I’m curious… are you only getting revenue when someone clicks an ad, or when someone views it?

HoodieDog

Both.

Johnny Alpha

I donate to MSF, the Guardian and Wiki on a casual, fly-by basis – give me an account and I will add you to my list

Shivers

My position: Lose “Fresh”, but make it so that if a point gets to a certain amount of downvote, it’s stricken from the records. Maybe -10, since +10 has served so well in the past? Maybe a second database trigger for -5, once a certain number of views are hit? Honestly, I don’t think there are that many things that are so un-funny that they’ll make it that far. Even in Fresh, how often do things fall off with +8 or so? Sometimes things are only middling funny. Okay. I already find some things to be only middling funny. Hit next, and problem solved.

Rohan Hampson

Was just about to suggest this.

HoodieDog

A few other users have suggested just letting the bad posts remain because the community tends to have some pretty funny comments when it occurs. I’m probably in favor of that as long as we have a very small percentage of shitposts getting on the site.

Shivers

That’s also fair.

Rohan Hampson

Yeah play it by ear for now. See if all hell breaks loose.

Arse Clown

i never knew there was a fresh section :/

Rohan Hampson

I just wanted to say, I remember when you guys did the big rollout and announced the scroll feed, and I remember thinking “why in the fuck would I want to scroll, I like seeing comments and whatnot”.
Speed forward to now and I only use the scroll feed, and open images that I’d like to see the comments on.
Interesting how you don’t know how much you’ll like something until you give it a go.
Either way, keep up the awesome work Hoodiedog and Co.

HoodieDog

Definitely going to keep the scroll feed.

Johnny Alpha

yay!

FizzPop

I’ve been using scroll view a lot recently to be able to check up more quickly, to find the snaps I haven’t viewed yet.
It’s been great. Once I find those snaps, if I see it has comments, I open it to see what people have been saying or if I want to say something.

Daemonius

I don’t need the fresh section, what I want is to see those posts that are new since my last visit. I want to see them all, good or bad, repost or just post.

When logged in there should be an option to see all new posts and when they are done the site should tell me that you’ve seen them all. Here’s some old ones you’ve already seen.

perthaussieguy

Since such a small number of visitors/users go to ‘Fresh’ then abolish it. I have no beef with a stupid post anyway (click and move on) and as mentioned already here, some of the comments on a stupid post can be funny reading (Even ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ has it’s cult viewers). If you are happy with the ‘SFW’ regular contributions, but you have the ability to remove any offending posts anyway, then get rid of it. You’ll never please all the people with all the posts anyway, of course.
I tend to go to Front page first and click ‘previous’ until I get to one’s I have seen, then I go to ‘fresh’ but either way, I try to see all the new ones one way or another.

Johnny Alpha

It is/are the Lolsnapien comments that makes this us !!

The009

@HoodieDog:disqus One of the things with the fresh section is that since the update when you go to the fresh section the menu seems to stay on the front page, not on fresh.

This is true in all browsers I have tested. This alone will cause a lot of people to not vote on anything fresh any push more visits to the latest image on the front page.

The only way to navigate the fresh section is using hotkeys or the actual arrows under each snap. I am sure there are a lot of people are just clickers on the menu.

Elusive7

As long as there continues to be some RSS feed. Too many sites are short-sightedly dropping RSS.

HoodieDog

Mind if I ask how do you use the RSS feed?

Elusive7

I have an old RSS reader called FeedDemon. It’s a very convenient way of gathering new content from all my favourite websites and especially YouTube subscriptions without turning on annoying notifications.

Johnny Alpha

seems that there’s a disparity about using ‘RSS feed’ – FeedDemon is being ‘discontinued’!?
With the market wide open for apps, ‘RSS feed’ is the cock-blocker!

matthew

sounds good to me! I spend waaaay too much time in both so don’t really mind what you do!!

Daemonius

After half a day of the new style I must say. Keep it, do not turn back. Forget the past.

Mym Zy

Wait… im part of the 1% omg /jumps of the building (1 floor)

BTW, loldumps still has fron and fresh.

The009

@HoodieDog:disqus why do I have to say ‘Got it’ every 30 seconds? It seems the cookie isn’t working for it 🙂

HoodieDog

It’s not supposed to do that. I turned it off, but will turn it back on for Monday for a couple of days.

FizzPop

Hoodie, I’m just curious, is there a reason the time/date stamps have been removed from snaps?

HoodieDog

Fixed

FizzPop

🙂 appreciate,
Wasn’t sure if it was a purposeful move or not

Sullenman

How is censoring out the nasty stuff going to work if everything goes straight into hot? I’ve been on the internet a while and, from what I gather, the door has been opened to let all the creeps in. I’m no stranger to snuff-torture-rape-vore/gore and some other unmentionable fetishes, but if I want to see that, I’d go to the usual places.

HoodieDog

If you posted something today, it would first be moderated. Only after 5-10 successful posts and we get comfortable you’re going to post memes that everyone enjoys, will you be given the ability to post without moderation.

So, a user is only given access to post to the front page without moderation after he/she has shown a track record of successful posts.

m4a4

@HoodieDog:disqus I gotta say, it’s a lot easier figuring out where I was now. Before, if I went to the fresh section, I’d have to remember where I was last in the front section (and I’m too lazy to bookmark it).

A few posts that are not quality in the front now, but I usually would see and downvote them in fresh anyways lol